Since introduction and development of ophthalmic equipment, various types of apparatuses employed have ceased to progress in precision and performance. Many of these known instruments utilize stands and other ophthalmic procedures and are typically manually operated units. These stands include external housings and weight counterbalanced arms that are used to support various types of medical instrumentation. Up to the present time it has been very difficult to impossible to employ all apparatuses for all types of patients for effecting adequate and comprehensive examination and treatment of patients which are seated in front of the ophthalmic equipment and specifically in front of slit lamp assemblies mounted to stationary tables.
Many times the tables are mounted to stands that require fine tuning adjustments to position the slit lamp assembly in a desired position that is relative to a seated patient. Often is it necessary for medical professionals to first adjust an arm to allow a patient to be seated properly.
Current ophthalmic equipment and methods used to position and examine patients hampers the efficiency of various medical personnel specifically, optometrists and ophthalmologists. Due to the varying physical attributes of patients, specifically those who are obese and/or large-breasted, it is often very difficult, if not impossible, to properly position the patient in front of current slit lamp assemblies that are mounted to fixed tables.
At times the optometrists or ophthalmologists are forced to forego certain examination techniques and procedures which utilize slit lamp assemblies and other ophthalmic equipment because it is almost impossible to properly position the patient close enough to the assembly to place a patient's chin in the chin rest of the assembly. Moreover, it is impossible for the physician to position the patient close enough to examine their ocular structures without utilizing the chin rest.
These difficulties force optometrists and ophthalmologists to work under limited condition, sometimes without providing the comprehensive care they are trained to do.
There are several devices that accommodate an ophthalmic apparatus during an ophthalmic examination and provide a support means for medical equipment. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,128,317 to Lecover discloses a head positioning means, accommodated on a stand used in conjunction with equipment for examinations of the eyes with conventional lower and upper support ledges, comprising a bi-directionally movable chin support mounted on the lower ledge.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,907,387 to Schwaegerle discloses a medical instrument support mechanism, particularly suitable for ophthalmological instruments, including first and second support arms and a suitable base member in which the first arm is vertically pivotal with respect to the base member and the base member is pivotal with respect to another support member, such as a support pole.
Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 5,000,563 to Gisel discloses an apparatus intended for the observation and treatment of a patient, in particular for ophthalmological cases. Such apparatus includes an arrangement for ophthalmological observation and treatment, means for effecting positioning and adjustment of the arrangement, an underframe for supporting the means and the arrangement as well as a head rest system. In this apparatus the means comprises jointed means permitting rotation of the arrangement around a horizontal axis. The apparatus is applied for observing and treating the eyes of a patient who may be seated or recumbent.
These devices provide a suitable means for mounting medical equipment and a means for examining patients. However, these inventions do not provide an ophthalmic assembly for obese and/or large-breasted patients. Although several references disclose various ways of placement of specific instruments, none disclose assemblies for accommodating the obese and/or large-breasted patient. Similarly, none disclose a means to accommodate patients that may be forced to sit in a “hunched-back” posture due to osteoporosis or other degenerative diseases.
What is needed, therefore, is a slit lamp assembly mounted to a tabletop wherein the slit lamp assembly comprises modified vertical chin rest supports for effecting proper positioning of a patient for examination, wherein the tabletop has been modified to easily accommodate large-breasted and/or obese patients. The combination of such modifications would enable the optometrist and/or ophthalmologist to more fully examine the patient than what is presently being done with current assemblies and their associated tabletop mounting. The modifications needed would enable obese and/or large-breasted patients to sit closer to the slit lamp assembly and the examining physician with less effort or strain.
It is, therefore, an objective of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for examining obese, large-breasted, and/or degeneratively-diseased patients easily, comfortably, and comprehensively during an ophthalmic examination.
It is also desirable to provide a tabletop for mounting the modified slit lamp assembly and other instruments that will allow the tabletop/slit lamp assembly to pivot in a plurality of planes to further accommodate patients suffering from degenerative diseases, wherein such patients are forced to always sit in a hunched over position during an examination. Such modifications are needed to enable the physician to alter the tabletop base and the slit lamp assembly combination simultaneously to allow for examination of these patients.